[1033] Corresp. de Philippe II, I, 433.
[1034] The government of Charles IX even winked at the secret levies made by the prince of Condé for the benefit of Louis of Nassau, from behind the mask of an official repudiation of the complicity of any French in Flanders, denying that the prince of Condé was ever in Antwerp in disguise (Poulet, I, 521, 3; Gachard, La Bibliothèque Nationale à Paris, II, 206). The last assertion, of course, was true. On July 24 a royal proclamation was issued at Alva’s instance, forbidding French subjects to go into the Low Countries “pour négotiation ou autrement.”—Poulet, I, 364; Gachard, op. cit., II, 27.
[1035] “Hinc illae lachrymae et ille metus,” wrote the provost to Granvella (Poulet, I, 405). It was the wish of the Emperor that the King of Spain would go in person and without an army to the Low Countries in order to pacify it by kindness and not by force (Archives de la maison d’Orange-Nassau, II, 505; Raumer, I, 173, December, 1566). But Philip II could not make up his mind to come in person to the Netherlands, although advised to do so by all. For years he continued to entertain the thought and continually put it off. See a letter of the Duchess of Parma to Duke Henry of Brunswick upon the coming of the duke of Alva, January 1567, in Archives de la maison d’Orange-Nassau, III, 21 ff.
[1036] On April 3, 1565, St. Sulpice sent word to Charles IX that Philip II had sent Menendez to Florida “avec une bonne flotte et 600 hommes pour combattre les Français et les passer au fil de l’épée.”—L’Ambassade de St. Sulpice, 364. When Fourquevaux succeeded him the French government had not yet learned of the massacre. St. Sulpice’s fragmentary information is to be found at pp. 400, 401, 404, 414. The abortive efforts of France to secure redress are spread at length in Corresp. de Catherine de Médicis, II, 209, 330, 337, 338, 341, 342, 360; and in Fourquevaux, I, Nos. 4-7, 9, 15, 21, 28, 43, 47, 55, 66. The editor’s account in the Introd., xv-xxi is admirable. In the Correspondencia española, II, 126-28, is to be found Philip II’s letter to Chantonnay, February 28, 1566, in reply to the ambassador’s letter of advice about Coligny’s enterprise. The blood of French colonists who had been massacred in Florida cried out for vengeance, and from the hour of its knowledge the subject of reprisal was a matter of common talk in the Norman ports (C.S.P. Dom., Add., XIII, 227). On September 24, 1566, Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador informed his government that he had information that a squadron was about to sail for this purpose, although it was “late for so long a voyage” (ibid., 31). On the whole history of this ill-fated colony see Gaillard, “La reprise de la Floride faite par le capit. Gourgues (1568),” Notices et extr. des manuscr. de la Biblioth. Nat., IV, and VII (1799); Gourgues, La reprise de la Floride, publiée avec les variantes, sur les MSS de la Bibl. Nat. par Ph. Tamizey de Larroque, 1867; Gafferel, Histoire de la Floride française, 1875; Parkman, The French in North America. The newest literature upon the subject is Woodbury Lowery, “Jean Ribaut and Queen Elizabeth,” American Historical Review, April, 1904, and the same author’s The Spanish Settlements within the Present Limits of the United States: Florida, 1562-74 (New York, 1905).
[1037] De Thou, V, 37-40.
[1038] Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, VII, 381, note. In 1558 Bolwiller made an inroad into France (Bulletin des comités historiques, 1850, p. 774; a summary of a letter concerning this episode to be found in the archives of Basel). On Bolwiller see Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, IX, 36, note. The new plan was occasioned by the issue of letters-patent of Charles IX on October 9, 1564, forbidding sale or alienation of any regalian rights of the Three Bishoprics without his consent (text in Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, VIII, 394).
[1039] Bolwiller to Granvella, October 16, 1564, on the written authority of Philip II (ibid., VIII, 429).
[1040] “Je tiens que les François, par voye de faict, y (Toul) mectront la main, comme ilz ont jà commencé, et le mesmes à Metz et Verdung.”—Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, VII, 465; Granvella to the Emperor, April 12, 1564.
[1041] Ibid., VIII, 504-6.
[1042] Ibid., IX, 44. Granvella to Perez, February 26, 1565; p. 111, Philip II to Chantonnay, then stationed at Vienna, April 2, 1565. Bolwiller intrusted the action to Egelolf, seigneur de Ribeauspierre (the German form is Rapolstein), a noble of Upper Alsace. His mother was a Fürstenburg. (See ibid., IX, 24, note.) Strange vicissitude, that a descendant of that house in the next century should have been Louis XIV’s right-hand agent in his seizures on the Rhine through the Chambers of Réunion, playing an identically opposite part from that of his ancestors.